


Epic Three

by KiwiBaer



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ancient Greek Religion & Lore Fusion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia is Hades, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Inspired by Orpheus and Eurydice (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Jaskier | Dandelion is Orpheus, Lots of Romanticizing Death, Multi, Slow Burn, Stregobor is Zeus, Tissaia de Vries is Demeter, Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg is Persephone
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:46:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25047877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiwiBaer/pseuds/KiwiBaer
Summary: In which Jaskier travels to the Underworld in search of inspiration and instead finds himself faced with a strained relationship between the King and Queen, and somehow ends up right in the middle of it all.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 27
Kudos: 71





	1. Rise and Fall

**Author's Note:**

> So the title is a small pun. Based off of the fact that it's the build up to an epic threesome and also that this idea stemmed from the song Epic III from Hadestown. You should definitely listen to it. I can promise you already I'm going to really enjoy this story so I hope you will too!
> 
> Also many thanks to the illustrious and lovely stillmadaboutpetra. They're a genius and this honestly wouldn't exist without them.

It required a lot of planning to die on purpose.

Jaskier wasn’t quite clever enough to figure it all out on his own, not the mechanisms of it. It’s a delicate balance, if one wanted to do it and still return to the living. One had to be prepared to break every law of nature and get away with it, a fugitive of mortality and consequence. A wanted poster on the wall of the Fates. He was, however, clever enough—or stupid enough perhaps—to want to try. Willing the idea into existence from that first inkling that overturned him amidst a spell of uninspired misery, when the world was too boring and too small to be sung.

A bard shared legends just as a storyteller did, though bards fit theirs to songs and beats. He knew well enough about the heroes who had entered the Underworld not intending to remain, or the prophets who had contact with the shades of the dead. There were realms beyond what he walked, ruled by gods of wicked domains. The stories gave it no justice, even when crafted by master bards older than he. The heroes weren’t focused on the architecture of the world, or the metaphor of the rivers, or the stories of the souls in the fields. The mediums didn’t interview the dead beyond what their kings asked of them, if their seances were to be believed at all.

Jaskier wanted to see it. He wanted to leech every last story from the place that he could, knew that Hades could be a muse to him beyond which another poet has never seen. The songs he could sing about the world beneath their own, about death and destiny, he’d be singing them until his own mortal end. (He’d always be singing until death, there was no other way he knew to live).

But, the very crucial part of his plan was that he had to make it back. There was no point writing dirges to the already dead. As much as it pained him to admit, he wasn’t revered enough to grow more famous and beloved posthumously—more likely to just be forgotten. Which was why he had to push the boundary, the literal boundary between life and death.

The endeavor required outside help. An aged priestess whose disdain for the project didn’t outweigh the compulsion to help—if he was going to kill himself, she had to make sure he did it right. So it was by her knowledge and her clever mind that Jaskier was given the instructions on how to enter the Underworld.

He didn’t bother telling his mother goodbye.

All he brought with him was his lute strapped to his back and two gold coins. He dressed brightly for his temporary demise, in funerary white and gold and purple. It wasn’t entirely traditional, more loud than honoring, a playful twist that would have befitted festival wear more appropriately if it weren’t for the colors. He figured he could afford to peacock a little, how much color would the dead normally get to see?

The outfit soaked to muted colors when the sun set and the first wave swarmed into his boat. It’s a tiny vessel, only made for one person and a net if that’s their aim. A more cautious person might have hired a crew, but Jaskier turned down the priestess’ suggestion on this matter. If he didn’t complete every step of the journey on his own, propelled by his own oars and ambition, it would feel like cheating.

The island reached him more so than he reached the island. The Underworld had a strange compulsion to it, despite its forbidden nature, that dragged mortals to its entrances should they dare to get close. For Jaskier’s endeavors, it made things simpler.

He spent the night near the beach, clothes drying on rocks. He spent the morning climbing a mountain. Cliffs bordered his walk as the sun crested over the back of Oceanus, and it might have been beautiful if the living dawn wasn’t oh so _boring_. Who hadn’t crafted a poem to Helios’s golden chariot racing into the early morn and driving out the shadows of evil night in their misguided early years, guided by tradition and things that are _pretty_? Anyone could watch a sunset, except maybe the blind but even they could feel the heat on their skin.

Jaskier needed something no one knew, no one had felt. An ugly desire, but he knew he could make it lovely. Not pretty, no pretty was for sunsets. Instead, he would make the scared people of the world love. Make them love the monstrous death heroes spoke of conquering and villagers spoke of escaping, when it was just as much a lover’s embrace at the end of a long day.

As he climbed higher, he remembered the stories, mostly confirmed by the priestess who knew too much. The Underworld at the edge of the world. To find it, one had to follow the path of the messenger. Cross the ocean river the surrounded everything known, traveling to something beyond. Find the mountain that held up the sky, a single point of contact between domains. Travel upwards, which didn’t make much sense to the bard, but it was insisted, the entrance to the realm of the dead was up the spinal switchbacks of the mountain.

It was a cave and Jaskier knew it instantly when he saw it. The cypress trees pressing in like conspiring nobles did nothing to hide the white marble starkly contrasting against red stone. Bone against blood. Teeth behind lips. Jaskier’s breath held, the pretense of expiry though his heart was actively thundering in his breast.

When he breathed in again, he tasted mint in the air. The trees. More herbs littered the entrance, leading like a procession into the garish stone maw. There was a surprising amount of vitality at the edge of death, life’s last attempts to flourish.

Jaskier felt dizzy with it, became acutely aware of the state of being alive. The way air flowed to his lungs and out his mouth. The vibrant pulse behind his ears, in his palms, against his ribs. The racing of his active mind, the thrill of fear or excitement, human thoughts and mortal feelings. Could a god who would never experience death feel the thrill of impermanence as he felt it now?

Suddenly, he couldn’t stomach his plan. He began to pace, feet crushing holes into the natural garden. Sharp mint and bright hints of rosemary burst with every step. He was killing as he delayed and that thought made him stop.

He dropped to his knees and gathered limp boughs of herbs. He shoved them anywhere on his person he could, tucking stems behind his ear, into the straps of his sandals, finding temporary places in the bunches of his cloth. Part of him wished for flowers, for buttercups or weeds, or anything to weave into a crown and pretend like it was Midsummer and the world was a flourish of color. But it bridged into darkening fall and flowers fell into dormancy.

For a last bit of comfort and to fight the coming tang of metal, Jaskier chewed into the trampled mint and swallowed it down. Felt the biology of consumption as his last action.

Then he was walking to the cave opening, squaring his shoulders and reminding himself there was no story in turning back now. He would embellish and bend truths, but he couldn’t invent an entire experience. His fingers smoothing along the planes of a mint leaf and then he’s ducking his head under the threshold and stepping into the tunnel.

He was expecting the darkness, not equipped with a torch, not even sure it would work if he had one, but he wasn’t expecting the heat. The warmth of the earth around him, as if it isn’t the end of the harvest season and frost should be creeping in. As if this isn’t a realm untouched by the heat of the sun or Hestia’s hearth. He sweltered in the heat, like stepping into a sealed kiln with just enough air not to suffocate and just enough breeze not to boil, but feeling stifled and sick all the same.

He might’ve complained, if anyone was near.

Instead he just wiped at his skin and walked on, ignoring more waves of the dizzying feeling that had halted him at the gate. Perseverance was one of his main virtues, if anything about him could be considered virtuous. However, since the lack of his complaints left an unsightly hush to the darkness, he slung his instrument down from his back and strummed blindly at its chords. Music filled in the gaps and he was soothed.

Then his foot slipped on shale. Heart leaping for the heavens, he skidded a few steps down the decline. He was caught by a firmness, a gathering of rocks of some kind and steadied himself, quick huffs of breath the new music. “Gods, fuck…” He hissed through clenched teeth, shivering at the thought of what kind of drop that could have been. Pulling his lute a little tighter to his chest, he stepped carefully over the mound of stones, feeling for each step.

He found his way back to dirt and sighed out in relief. His next stride was taken with confidence.

But there was no ground beneath it. His foot tumbled out from under him and the rest of him followed and now his heart stayed in his throat as he choked on a cry. The drop wasn’t sheer, Jaskier realized as his flank collided with earth, but the slope sent him sliding down still. An unfortunately gravelly slide down as Jaskier did nothing to stop himself, merely clinging to his lute (lucky to have not fallen onto it) and recalling grimly his earlier wonder at the entrance being located at such a high elevation. He prayed he wasn’t literally falling down the length of the mountain, though that was how he would tell the story.

When friction overcame momentum and the steepness of the path declined, Jaskier stopped sliding. The stinging heat of scrapes and bruises didn’t prevent him from realizing that the tunnel was now cold and the rocks beneath him were muddied beneath his cut palms. His outfit was shredded enough he knew he’d lost a few layers, one shoulder bare, so the air sank into him visciously.

He could taste the spray of a river, heard its sluggish sounds and suddenly he knew where he was. Not even at the base of the mountain but under it. Falling for miles.

A sudden fright caught hold of him and he was shoving his hands into his pockets. His fingers came free full of leaves and he shook them to the ground while searching. Eventually, he felt the weight of gold in his palms again and breathed out in relief. He hadn’t lost them in the fall. He stared down at where the coins must be, his eyes adjusted but still not seeing through the nothingness. Closed his eyes though it made no difference.

“Any last words, Jaskier?” He murmured.

Gave himself a minute. Sang a little tune. Swallowed into the dryness of his throat.

“Yeah, I’m going to miss this.” He admitted and then slipped the coins into his mouth. He tucked one under his tongue, the edge biting into the soft bottom of his mouth and settling too big in the space. He placed the other one, a little less awkwardly but no less heavy on top of his tongue. The taste was overwhelming, dirty coins in the mouth unpleasant even without the positioning.

He hoped when he died and repeated this process, he wouldn’t have to taste gold and impurities. Though he’d miss the taste of honeyed wine and bread, so maybe he should accept the bitterness if it meant he’d still have that.

The coins sandwiching his tongue, his body raw from the fall, Jaskier continued forward with as much grace as he could muster. The walk was even more unsteady, not because of the slope anymore, but because of the frequent appearance of unseen rocks springing up to trip him. He let his pace slow, the exhaustion and stinging in his limbs not disagreeing with it.

When he began to see specks of gold in his vision, there was a part of his brain that feared he was growing manic in the darkness. But as he drew closer and the blur of light grew greater, he realized it was torches that he was seeing, the glow cast out wide. Towering posts began to dot the path he walked, the torches eternally burning high above head, bare flame a flicker of ore. He could see himself again, saw the scuffs across his form. His left sandal looked about to break. But he was real again, corporeal, so he didn’t worry about the other consequences.

The torches allowed him to see the river before he fell into it thankfully. The churning, dark water hid poisonous intents, he knew. There were many rivers so evil they’d been cast underground to hide their venom. But the River Styx seemed especially cruel, something odorless burning against the skin in his nose, his eyes watering. This was the river that gods swore upon, that mortals crossed if they were lucky enough to be buried with the proper fare.

Jaskier came to the sudden realization that the flickering of the light wasn’t casting elaborate shadows. Shadows didn’t move like that, no matter how capricious a flame. He wasn’t alone on this side of the river and the low babble he heard wasn’t just Styx whispering to him. Every where he looked were the pale shades of a human figure, a silhouette of vague features. He felt a strange hollowness when he tried to look at them, like he’d already emptied his stomach and was still retching on air. Still, he forced his eyes to focus through the pooling of tears, and stared at the closest figure.

Relief surged when he realized they still had a face. Harrowed and sunken, but there was the scruff of a beard, hair falling into eyes. The colors were faded like a sun-bleached painting, and darkened like a burn, but there was still a person standing before him.

When they made eye contact, the shadow _lunged_. Jaskier gasped wildly through his nose and lurched back, but the spirit overwhelmed him in desperation. Faded hands scrambled for his face, reaching, clawing for his mouth. Jaskier flinched and pressed his lips tight, but the fingers made no contact.

He felt viciously cold, ice water splashed onto his face. Now it was Jaskier’s turn to surge forward and he sprinted past the shade with his mouth shut tight, feeling emptied out of everything but the coins weighted on his jaw.

He slowed after some distance, but decided that he wasn’t going to stop again on this side of the river and didn’t draw close enough to be touched by any shadows. They could probably sense the gold, or maybe smell the life on him. He was watched with every step, could tell from the prickle across his skin and the goose bumps that broke out anywhere exposed to the chilled air. Head down, jaw clamped, he followed the river.

The ferryman wasn’t featured in many stories. Any descriptions of this part of the journey tended to be in summary, without details. Even the priestess had only been able to describe the rules and the theory; a golden coin on his tongue and a trip across the river. Jaskier craned his eyes for the first sight of the ferry, but what he saw first was a line. A queue. The dead blurred in a smokey line extending across the gravel towards him and then looping back to the opposite direction. No one moved. He wasn’t sure if he saw the end of it in the distance or if that was just where his vision stopped in the dark.

Oh, that wouldn’t do at all.

Jaskier started to run again, edging between the stream of shadows and the river to his left. His movement caused a few outbursts from the dead and as he moved every so often a hand would reach out for him and he’d have to dart away to avoid another haunting touch. Otherwise he tried to ignore them as best he could, the despairing looks. He was already cheating death, it wasn’t like he was expected to follow any of the other rules.

It felt like miles passed beneath his feet. Honestly, he was starting to get a bit sore, between climbing a mountain, sliding back down it, and now running for however long it truly was. It was a human sensation he didn’t much need in the moment.

The end of the line appeared in a blaze of torches that reared like a bonfire at a distance. He could tell from how the dead bundled up shoulder to shoulder and pressed, that this was where the ferryman had to be. It was a strange sight, the way they moved and swarmed, the blur of ants converged on a single crumb, where one’s limbs and body couldn’t stand out from any other’s. In the middle of it all, hidden at a length but apparent with time, a figure stood tall and in focus, drowned in folds of black and gold cloth. Surrounded by the haze of shadows, the figure was so clear it felt out of place, a brass note blaring through the orchestra.

When Jaskier was close enough to see what was happening, his stomach curled in horror. The cloaked individual towering above the rest, would approach the nearest shadow, reach out a veiled hand and claw into the mouth of the spirit. Its hand would retract and then point to the side, the rest of the dead swarming en masse to overtake the rejected spirit, casting them out of line and taking its place.

You’ve come this far, he might have said had his tongue not been pinned down with gold. He shoved his shoulders back, his chin up and entered the fray, throwing himself between the horde of shadows.

Instantly, he felt like he was dying. His ears ached and his skin crawled from the cold that surrounded him, a death-dealing cold that was only found on isolated mountain peaks and frozen lakes intent to kill. He trembled through the crowd, throat contracting and gagging on the wrongness associated with a living thing touching someone else’s soul. A bodily rejection. The dead raked their hands through his body, towards his face, trying to touch and tear and steal away his fare. If bile filled his mouth, he couldn’t open his mouth to spew it. That thought alone forced him to remain steady.

He spilled out onto the stones, the last of the shadows scraping for his ankles and his body still threatening to shake apart.

There were hands gripping him, and these were solid. They had substance, lifted with it and yanked Jaskier forwards into its form. The bard choked on his gasp, eyes widened and seeing nothing but black and gold as he only reached to the individual’s groin at his full height. Tipping his head back, he searched for a face but found a clay mask staring down at him with the eyes painted gold and the lips painted black. The expression was stagnant and emotionless, but Jaskier got the impression that he was being laughed at.

“A living beastie.” A hissed voice said, sounding of nothing and no one. Unrecognizable. “Here to see the King? Come to barter?” Jaskier shook his head. “No? To steal, then?” Jaskier’s brow furrowed at the accusation, his denial more insistent. “Hmm.” The feeling of being faced with an unseen grin increased, mixed with the discomfort of being studied. Jaskier remained silent. Then the ferryman was shrugging his mountainous shoulders and reaching out a hand.

Jaskier barely had time to prepare before a huge index finger was prying at his jaw and shoving into his mouth. The metallic taste was replaced by the taste and feel of pure ash, his mouth a decayed hearth scraped by its nail as it dug the coin from his lips, too singularly focus to feel for the second.

When it pulled back, Jaskier kept his lips sealed tight and trapped his ragged coughs in his throat. It was a torturous feeling, like suffocating, but the priestess had impressed her lessons sternly.

He was not to open his mouth once after paying his fare. He could not utter a word or even flash a smile to the ferryman. If any of the dead caught sight of his smuggled coin, they would stop at nothing to tear it from his mouth. It was the only way to return to the land of the living.

So Jaskier struggled to swallow down his coughs and watched as the ferryman lifted his coin in the air, a tiny disk on his large finger, to verify its mint. There was a happy trill from the ferryman, an inappropriate sound for such a large terrifying thing.

“Well then, your intentions don’t matter much do they? Come with me, beastie.” A great hand slid down his back, pushing him toward the river’s edge insistently. The gesture was multi-purposed, Jaskier realized as he was shoved. The ferryman was patting him down, checking for more riches on his person. He saw a branch of rosemary fall to the water’s edge and watched parts of it curl and brown, wilted in seconds where it touched the Styx.

The priestess had warned him that the ferryman was a greedy thief. Stole only for the sake of having, nowhere to spend it when they never strayed from their path across the river.

Jaskier danced away from the next shove to avoid being propelled into the water, ducking towards the broad boat that didn’t have nearly high enough walls to protect Jaskier’s skin from the touch of the caustic river. He gathered his clothes around himself tighter and stepped gingerly in, knocked to his knees seconds later as the ferryman leaped into the boat after him, the entire vessel shaking and careening to the side in a way that jack-rabbited Jaskier’s heart and threatened a lips-parting cry.

He remained silent and caught himself with clawed hands on a wooden beam, though his eyes watered from the pain of resisting sound.

“You’re quiet.” The ferryman hissed curiously as they settled in behind him, sprawled like a king at the back of the boat. They dipped one sandaled foot over the edge, draped into the virulent liquid. “You’re hiding something.”

Jaskier sat stiffly at the bottom of the boat, centered away from all corners and trying to believe he’d make it to the other side without burns. He shook his head once, though it was a weak lie without his words to smooth it.

“Ah yes. Beasties are always hiding things. When they’re dead, there’s no point, they’re seen. Can’t see a living beastie the same way.”

Their head tipped and then they were leaning forward. Leaning over Jaskier’s back, over his shoulders, so far into his space it was like a crane stretching its neck and preparing to strike. Jaskier was encased in a shadow and felt fear once again thundering through his pulse. Would the ferryman see Jaskier’s coin even through his closed lips? Did they know he had it, that he was hiding it for his return?

Sweat gathered in the creases of his body. A slick reminder of his precarious relationship with mortality.

But the ferryman dropped back and made a similar little trill. “If your tongue is split, you still have an instrument. Play.” He was nudged with a sandal. “Beastie, play. It’s a long trip across the river.”

For the first time in his life, Jaskier had forgotten about the lute on his back. Lucky none of the spirits had flesh or bone, otherwise he was sure they would have torn it off of him or splintered it. Instead, his dropped his lute to his lap and resisted smiling to the untouched wood.

He played for the ferryman. Songs that he would normally accompany with verses, but he sang in his head and hummed through his throat and it was almost enough to be good. The ferryman didn’t complain at the sound, still lax in their domain. Jaskier was gratified at the sight of them tapping their fingers against the water to the rhythm, though he was dissatisfied with his own performance.

Useless without his voice. He couldn’t hide the stumbles of his still trembling hands.

He reached the end of his patience before they reached the end of their ride. Together they sat in silence, with the ferryman occasionally asking questions Jaskier couldn’t answer and amusing themselves by answering for him. The being had a whole narrative for Jaskier by the end. A poet come for his lost wife, whom he couldn’t satisfy with his mediocre lute-playing, and he’d have to beg back. Jaskier’s neck was hot with irritation and shame by the end.

Their games were over as the ferryman leaped out of the boat, sending everything splashing and lurching again. Jaskier was shaking all over again, but his feet hit solid earth and he collapsed into it with a sigh through his nose. Curses and praise balanced like scales in his mind.

The ferryman, satisfied with their efforts, left him like that on the far bank. There was a final hiss with their back turned to him. “Welcome to Hades, beastie. Good luck winning over your lady.”

Jaskier allowed a pinched, wild smile at the earth. When the boat careened back to the other side, he stood and drew in a deep breath. He’d made it. And mostly without issue! There was an optimistic spark in his mind as he faced off the fields in front of him, hands on his hips. Here it was, the Underworld. Previously untraversed by any living bard, poet or painter in the world.

The realm stretched before him. An open field of wheat was his first impression of the land beyond the River Styx, but his eyes focused through the gloom and he realized that each golden blade was a soul, glowing brilliantly. They wandered past each other, catching rows of torchlight as they moved and swayed and glimmering like a breeze across grain. Jaskier’s eyes widened at the sight. This was nothing like the other bank, the misery of rejection left behind with the ferryman and their queue.

Souls blazed golden in the riches of the Underworld. Jaskier tucked that metaphor away for later, pleased at the verses already spinning in his mind. It was a beautification, he knew. The fields were barren around them, devoid of enrichment, and the dead within looked despondently listless.

This was another temporary location made semi-permanent for some, just as the other side of the river had been. A lack of space, an over-abundance of rules preventing the dead from passing through smoothly. He could see, off in the distance, another gathering of shimmering bodies hinting at some other checkpoints. If Jaskier were to venture a guess, that would be where the souls were judged. And exactly where Jaskier would avoid. The living were struck down at the gates during sorting without question.

He set off in the opposite direction, eyes straining for a wall. Jaskier was no master thief, but under the priestess’ guidance, he would find his way across Hades without a doubt. And that meant scaling a wall like a petty burglar.

And all he had to do was avoid—

“Look out!” Voices of the dead rose up, shrieking as the souls darted about in flashes like golden scaled fish. They were panicked and fleeing in any direction away from where Jaskier now walked. “It’s the guardian! It’s coming this way!”

—that.

Jaskier’s heart jumped incriminatingly into a gallop, his head turning to look behind him as a sound rang out across the field. The furious rhythm of hooves at speed, a thunderous tempo. There was weight behind it too, more than an average work horse. And as Jaskier turned, he caught sight of exactly the image he was praying against.

A colossal horse approached, a brown mare who seemed to fill up the whole cavern with her size. On her shoulder she sprouted three necks, all of them leading to heads that faced forward with vicious intent. Dark eyes focused on nothing but Jaskier who gaped up at her, eyes stretched wide. One head tossed as they made eye contact and another whinnied.

Jaskier felt his lips part on an “oh _fuck_ ”, the coin slipping from his tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, lovelies!


	2. Scaling Walls (of the Literal and Figurative kind)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am the slowest writer in the universe, and also the world is on fire. I hope all of you are staying safe!

Terror hit first as Jaskier watched the coin drop from his lips, reflexes muddied in an instant by the freezing grip of it. His brain just a second too sluggish as he didn’t think to reach for it before it bounced off the grass and rolled forward. Out of immediate reach and towards the danger ahead. His eyes darted between the lost coin and the mare fast approaching, a decision threatened between the two. He could either delay to get the coin, as likely to put himself right beneath the hooves of the beast as to retrieve it, or run in the opposite direction with a prayer that his stubby legs might carry him away from the guardian’s immense reach. And trust that he’d find some other way out of the Underworld, coinless.

In the face of a miserable set of choices, Jaskier dove for the coin. The ground shook beneath his palms as he planted them to the earth, on his knees scrambling for the gold in the seconds before he’d certainly be crushed. Greyed grass clumped and obscured the coin and his hands sifted desperately through it until they collided solidly and he pinched it from the muck.

He was on his feet with a skittering heart just as the mare was upon him, heads all tossing and a horrible threefold sound rising from her many mouths. Jaskier cringed, sank into his shoulders and hugged himself, the heads dropping so low and so near that he felt the gale of her breath. With nothing else to try, he held up his hands (one tightly clenched in a fist) and cried.

“Whoa! Whoa there!”

He stuttered a few steps back and to the side. Tried to summon the image of how chariot racers and farmers from his home gentled their steeds, imitation his only connection. Animal handling wasn’t commonly involved in the bardic lifestyle.

“Whoa, dear. Pretty thing. Please, please do not trample this innocent ol’ bard.” He sought one of the mare’s sets of eyes, trying to see it and be seen.

To his shock, when their eyes met the mare slowed from her charge, her hooves digging into the dirt and catching until she fell into a trot upon reaching him. Her momentum great enough that she stepped delicately over his head before she could stop and circle back to face him. A shadow danced from her, cast by hundreds of raised torches and it engulfed Jaskier completely. The mare was monstrously huge this close, at least triple his height. When she lowered her heads again, Jaskier’s entire body was barely greater than the length of each one, her necks thicker than he was wide.

He didn’t dare move as the heads converged to sniff at him. Noses shoved into his hair and snuffed at his clothes. He closed his eyes while the mare battered him with heavy breaths and nearly knocked him back in her investigation. His human heart still thundered with near-death fright and his mind weakly tried to process through the continuation of his existence.

When one of the heads began lipping at his shoulder into the colorful fabric tied there, he flinched bodily away from the touch. Her mouth covered that entire side, up his neck and down his arm with room to spare. Myths of man-eating horses jumped to mind and he squeezed his eyes tighter against what was certain to be a harsh bite cutting through the whole joint.

Instead, he felt a much more delicate bite. Her teeth barely contacted his skin, just a brush of flat edges and then a ticklish glide of something being dragged from his clothes. He cracked open his eyes in time to see the mare with a bundle of mint hanging from one of her mouths. Another head watched the first chew, while the final kept Jaskier fixed intensely in a stare.

Jaskier released a slow breath and then smiled weakly at the horse. “Ah, see? I brought you treats, girl. Just for you. For the prettiest mare I have ever laid eyes on, hm? Aren’t you beautiful.” A slow step back to punctuate the praise. “You must not get spoiled often down here, with nothing but the dead around. Boring, self-absorbed folk! Can’t appreciate the beauty that’s towering before them, like… like a chestnut obelisk. Yeah, that’s good. I don’t imagine they come down with oats in their pockets, don’t come with anything for such a pretty thing. Disgraceful.” He continued to creep away, talking and praising constantly in an attempt to cover the movement. It was a painful addiction to speak when faced with danger, Jaskier’s one tactic when his mouth was too full of words, but his mind a raptor screech of alarm. “I’m, eh, I’m really upset I didn’t bring oats in my pockets, to be honest. For such a lovely girl. That would have been smart. Kind of a misstep on the priestess and I’s part. Who’s taking care of you, dear?”

The heads all turned towards him as he moved, ears pricked forward to listen, both actions that stuttered his heart over again. The memory of the bottom of her wide hooves overhead as she’d gingerly stepped over him was still in mind. He could easily imagine how they’d crush into his small, delicate body if she were intent on charging. Leaving him just an arched imprint on the ground.

Nothing but bones, half dead already, the priestess had said. Sounding far too much like what a mother might have, unfamiliar to him.

But the guardian didn’t thunder forward again, just remained shockingly still and stonelike while Jaskier stretched the distance between them, worked to stay in steady eyesight of the beast. A swell of victory filled his chest when he’d gotten some distance away, a triumphant feeling similar to how he had felt after crossing the Styx before he was faced with the threat of this mare. With every meter apart from the beast, he grew emboldened in his success.

“Stay there, girl. Please.” He gave her one last tight-lipped smile, an imploring nod. And in the face of her obedience thus far, he turned on his heels and bolted in the opposite direction. His pulse thundered through his body erratically, and he waited for the echoing crashes of the mare in pursuit.

None came. There was silence behind him.

Yet, ahead of him, Jaskier saw lights. Not the torches that were raised high above head on posts of twisted iron, but the souls as he had seen them previously, the blazes of those left in the fields to wander. They’d grown closer with Jaskier’s attention on the mare and as he ran from her, he found himself knocking between the spirits. They were in clumps now, each wildfire blazes of the bright light of their souls. It took battering through his second grouping for him to realize there was a difference from his last encounter with spirits of the dead. A shoulder collided with his own, hands brushed at him in passing, every touch _solid_. He was being touched, the dead alive enough here to have substance and form, to take up space where once he’d only felt brushing, aching cold. The realization sent its own frozen shock through him.

He didn’t have long to dwell on it, one of the hands gaining purchase and suddenly he was yanked from his run and scrambling against the anchor. Fear caught in his throat. He turned frantic and rabbit-witted to his attacker, taking in bare details of the spirit (a farmer’s hat, golden outline, snarling lips) while his free hand scratched at the hold.

“You carry gold.” A voice sounded, frighteningly real, from the spirit before him. The hand around his wrist, all too corporeal as it was, tightened its fingers into his skin, hard enough to send warnings to Jaskier’s brain. The painful, sinking burn of too much pressure. Yanked back by the harsh grasp, Jaskier’s resistance was meaningless against the spirits extraordinary strength.

Jaskier’s eyes moved wildly, a ripple of action, over the specter’s shoulder as a larger threat crept closer—not larger, perhaps. But certainly more numerous. The other figures he’d passed and many more beyond were drifting closer, tension clear in their stances and gazes fixed on the Jaskier’s fist, where it was caught and raised high.

The priestess’ warnings sounded off loudly in his ears, echoings of a curse. Not to show the coin, not to let it slip past his lips or betray himself with his words.

A wall of light closed in around him, searing like the yellowed core of a flame and burning hot with intent. Souls starved of light and life, faced with the one thing that promised them the whole world, revival, and nothing but one pesky beastie getting in their way. Fingers dug against his wrist, talons from more spirits starting to claw at his fist, scraping for the cold. Jaskier held life so tightly in his palm it indented his skin and there was poetry in that somewhere, but his mind was bleached from panic and there was nothing but light flooding in from the cavern around him.

Then, thunder. Cracking, exploding. Jaskier cringed, tearing himself free of the grasp in shock and fear, an instant, defensive curl inwards. The rock shook and he turned to the noise, catching only aftershocks of sound, all behind and around him. He traced it, as dozens of spirits turned with him and caught the same sight.

It was the mare, towering beast, her left hoof raised in preparation to stomp at the ground again. So much force behind her weight and height, the power in muscles larger than Jaskier’s body. A shoulder built for carrying tons, a joint made for running and kicking. No wonder she could produce such an eruption of noise.

She caught up.

Jaskier remained frozen, gaping at the many heads that shook and sounded of her anger. A high-pitched cry, a squeal like a flute out of tune, came from each mouth out of sync and it was a noise more frightening than the crash of her hooves. Hooves that came down to border either side of Jaskier’s body now, great brown posts of an animate gate. Guardian of the Gates of Hades. She warded him with her fury and the spirits flinched from her wrath, still frightened by violence even in death. Who knew what the mare could do, what threat she had over them, but it was enough to scatter the crowds. Souls skittered away from Jaskier, back to their wandering fields. A scatter of electrum like a struck pile of coins.

The area emptied, leaving Jaskier with the horse. He looked up at her with a wince, the bard a hesitant, shrunken thing as he waited for her next action. Prayed he wouldn’t be the target of her next stomp.

Her heads dropped and he jumped, yelping as a snout nearly bigger than him slammed into him and knocked him backward. His balance thrown wild, he scurried away from her ranged, wobbled and danced and tried to get away, to reconfigure, to gleam what was about to happen to him. No chance was given as instead he was shoved back another few steps by the other two heads in turn. He was forced back a distance, battered over a couple meters, but it was covered in one half step from the mare, her shadow above him as she followed effortlessly.

“Whoa!” He cried, holding his hands out and catching a snout as it threatened to bowl him over. He still moved from her force, but managed not to be thrown out of touch. He patted her nose when she snorted at his hold, hands dancing away after. “Apologies, apologies, girl. But what on earth—why—”

Her ears flicked on the closest head, while another tossed their mane and all three fixed him in a steady stare. Her nose neared again, but it was a slow, broadcasted movement. Gently, she pressed into his arm, lifting it up into the air. More confused than before, Jaskier allowed the movement with some sputtering. Until his fist was nudging into his own face and he caught sight of the speckled dirt and scratches on his hand and the gleam of gold peeking from the crease of his palm.

“Oh.” He swallowed and then found himself laughing. Ridiculous. “You’re telling me to put it back.”

A snort from each of the heads, the first synchronized action he’d seen from the three and Jaskier laughed again. Giddy from the absurdity of conversing with a giant three-headed horse, a conversation that was almost fully coherent. Delirious as he was, he thought the mare and the priestess might get along should they ever meet.

“I’m going to miss our talks, girl.” He told her fondly, sighs and grunts sounding from the different heads.

He eyed the coin. From its journey to the ground, it was left a mosaic of dust and grime, the field leaving its filthy mark on it. Even after rubbing it into his thigh, it came back smudged. Unpalatable. Jaskier groaned and his delaying earned him another nudge from the guardian. He gave her a look that was returned with threefold discontent. The bard resigned himself with a sight and slipped the coin back into his mouth.

Gagged once. He hadn’t been keen on eating dirt even as a child.

Once he was over his initial repulsion, he threw his arms wide and showed his tongue to the mare, a performance of evidence so she knew he’d done as she commanded. Immediately, he was shoved back once again, forcing him to shut his mouth and focus on not choking the metal flying into his throat, or the disgruntled shout lodged behind it.

He began to walk, bullied as he was by the mare, anticipating each brush of her nose and jogging out of her reach before she could hit him. He’d had quite enough of _that_ now. Which, eventually, the guardian seemed to realize and settle with the knowledge that Jaskier went where she led. She stopped her assault, allowing the two of them to journey forward at a brisk pace. Jaskier found himself taking long strides, stretching his gait until if he attempted to walk any faster he’d have to break into a run. The guardian moved at a pace that must have been agonizingly slow.

He wanted to ask her where they were going. Wanted to ask her why she was guiding him, why she protected him, why he’s still alive in the land of the dead even after being caught by the guardian of it. Why any of this was happening. He’d ask if she was planning to hurl him into a pit of lava or some other torturous hell for invasion, as well. There were stories, rumors of punishments given to those who angered the gods in life and faced their wrath at the end. Some who had even come into the Underworld with ill intent. He tried not to remember them in detail, to sink into the temptation of propagating panic.

It was painful. The quiet without his voice.

They walked on. They walked for long enough that the thrill of constant danger faded to a fatigue as cavernous and consuming as the Underworld around them. Jaskier’s body stitched together from adrenaline and forward momentum, was loosening its ties in what could almost seem like the protective care of the guardian. His strides turned from confident and brisk to stilted as he stumbled every few steps. Not enough blood flow, not enough energy, not enough… something. He didn’t know the anatomy of a man beyond what he could hold in his hands or hear in stories. Heart and brain, somewhere the soul of a man was carried, but he ached down to the core of it all.

It was with utter relief that he caught sight of the wall. A grand white structure, like the stones at the entrance miles above, that stuck out against the greyed landscape as a skeletal spine of an ancient, giant beast. The stripped column of fallen titans. The wall was nearly as tall as the mare behind him and as far as there was light, Jaskier could see the wall stretch to the horizons. Slumbering, barricading against some anticipated force.

Strange to have a wall in a realm of spirits. Jaskier had thought as much when the priestess had first laid out the plan, telling him he would have to scale it to avoid the judgement at the gates. Yet seeing it now raised much greater curiosity, as it was much more guarding than even his imagination had rendered. What frightened the King and Queen of Hades so much that they had to throw up a barrier of marble in the center of their kingdom? Their own subjects? Or follied trespassers such as Jaskier, stealing into the Underworld?

No answers were found at the wall, just glimmers of white as he slowed in his walk at the base. Found one more question there instead, standing before the sheer surface: how was he supposed to scale it?

A shove from behind sent him smacking against the stone with a grunt, his hands splaying out to catch himself. Throwing a glare over his shoulder, the mare stopped him before he could do anything more, nosing her head underneath him so he was forced to fall back against one of her snouts instead. He felt a flash of terror at the contact, worrying that she might take offense. There was merely a snort and then more force, the mare _pushing_ with no room to go except up. Yelping in terror at the movement, feet dragging against the marble, it wasn’t until he was lifted half the wall’s height that he realized she was raising him to the top of it. Very different from the original plan.

This was… easier. If not more alarming. He clenched his eyes shut before he could see the height he would fall if he slipped off the horse’s nose.

One final push forward from the snout supporting him and Jaskier tumbled over the edge, slowing only after a few wobbling steps. The stone held him solidly and he sank onto it with a heavy breath, flopped to his belly into the pressing chill. He’d experienced many threats to his life in the past day, he was tipped between being constantly afraid for his mortality and thoughtlessly nonchalant to anything but forward momentum, The Fates yo-yoing with his string every passing moment. Such was a bard’s journey. He just reveled in the chance to finally rest.

He remained prone, only looking up to give a belated wave to the mare when she left with a last paired huff and a shake of her many manes. He watched her leave for the length of his vision before rolling onto his back once she left it and closing his eyes completely. Light was dimmer here on the wall, fainter than in the fields where torches and spirits burned their colors brightly. Jaskier saw nothing painting the back of his eyelids. He meant to rest there only a moment, claim his fain reprieve on the marble at another transition where he toed a line seldom crossed, but the fatigue of his journey finally overtook him. He slept.

Perhaps he woke hours later. Perhaps minutes. But he awoke to dimness and cavern, without change from his reality before, so the passage of time was lost to him. Groggy, disoriented, and cold, he lifted his head from the rock and was immediately assaulted with aches and pains across every inch of his battered limbs.

“Fk-“

He jolted up and coughed, throat a dry scratch and word stifled by metal. His tongue was laden still by a gold coin, which had leapt to the back of his palate when he attempted to speak. A shiver overtook him as he realized he’d slept with it there, tempting the Fates to choke him to death with his only salvation.

He rubbed at the sore spot beneath his jaw, where hours of pressure left him feeling bruised above his throat. One certainly couldn’t claim that the trip to death’s doorstep was a pleasant one.

A voice. That was what had woken him, something he realized only after hearing it again, chiding in tone but indistinct in words, coming from beyond the wall to the land he hadn’t even looked at yet. He held his breath a moment longer, listening to the voice and once it fell quiet, he rolled, not yet willing to face the agony of standing. He peeked over the edge.

It was brightly lit beyond on the other side of the wall, just as the fields behind had been. But instead of an endless grey meadow, it was a garden.

Not the humble sort of garden he’d seen in his village, where women tended to small plots to supplement what they bartered for, but a sprawling, thriving garden. Something Jaskier had only experienced in stories, such as those that spoke of exotic jungles, which matched the garden in abundance and density of flora. But the plants here were familiar, lilac trees and wild brambles and garden flowers and fruits and herbs, too, if he stared hard enough between the leaves. The sight was startling. Jaskier had given his goodbyes to vibrant life at the entrance to these caves. Now ancient looking trees stretched their boughs over most of the area. He could barely see the ground, dotted with brilliant colors and an abundance of greens. From his angle, he caught the shape of a path through the thick garden, and perhaps the edges of a fountain, but there was too much to focus on. His eyes roaming everything and seeing new sights with every sweep.

Beyond the garden, when he thought to look beyond, there was a blur of white, black, and gold. The hard edges of a building.

But the voice sounded again and Jaskier searched for it, forcing himself up to his elbows and squinting through the canopy. A shift in the green, a change of shade, just enough to make Jaskier wonder if there was a breeze through the Underworld rustling the leaves. Then, behind the wavering foliage, he caught sight of three figures. Jaskier leaned over the edge, a threat in his balance, but he craned for the view still.

A woman, draped in robes of dark green, cut short as a maiden’s but she wore too much gold up her arms and in her hair to be. Her hair, despite the opulent decorations woven through, she wore down and freely wild, a brown that lit warmly from the torch she carried in her hand and glimmered with gold dust. Bathed in the same aura of light, a large black dog prowled one side of her, brushing into her tunic with every step. A smaller, slender form darted across a branch opposite their path and the woman held her hands out to it. It came into sight with the brown ringed face of a polecat, climbing down her arms and settling across her shoulders like a fluffed collar.

Jaskier sighed, enchanted.

Startled a second later when the woman turned and cast her gaze towards the wall and up, catching his eye. Yet, the movement blurred strangely in his vision, like a reflection across a pool as the water is dragged away, shimmering. As if, for a second, he was looking at three faces at once. But then she settled, with her hand on her hip, and she was singular again and Jaskier realized he was delirious from sleep.

“Well?” She called, patting the head of the dog. “Boy in the shadows? What exactly are you planning to do, spend the rest of your life up there? You’ve come this far.”

Jaskier stared another moment. Jaskier was particularly sensitive to the beauty of humanity, but this woman could be compared to no one he had ever met. The curve of her jaw was divine from the light of the fires surrounding her, her freckles a multitude of dappling beauty, and he wished he could see the color of her eyes, but knew that he could get lost in the pools of them, like an ocean of… indeterminate hue. Even the slight irritated arch to her brows was charming.

“Get down here, come on!” She urged with a huff.

He sat to attention and then studied the wall below him dubiously. There was nothing below him but thin cypress trees that couldn’t bear his weight, but a bit further down the wall, sturdier oak limbs reached out to him. Like he was a polecat on a branch. Promising security.

He grimaced and held in cries all the way down, aches burning through his legs and arms with each strain against the boughs. The bark bit cruelly into scratches from his slide down the mountain and the spirits of the dead, reopening and adding roughness to his palms. When he finally spilled out to the ground below he did so with a heavy sigh, relieved to be swallowed up into the garden.

Beside him, there were flowers, the hints of colors he’d seen through gaps in the arboreal ceiling. Small, brilliant white narcissuses, their star shapes layering over each other as they leaned towards him. Very much alive. The stories they promised, it was almost intoxicating.

The woman hadn’t come for him, so he abandoned the flowers and navigated his way around the growth, seeking her image in green and gold.

His head craned up constantly, barely keeping his eyes ahead as the garden encased him in wonder and brilliance. Light mottled across his face, an illusion of sun. Peace settled in like a spell, threateningly oppressive. He hummed around his weighted coin, drafting everything he saw to a tune.

It seems she’d waited for him, with an amused irritation, her hip and brow cocked as he stepped forward. She spoke once he was near enough for a conversational volume. “Yennefer told me there was a living one sneaking in.”

Yennefer. Jaskier swayed under the power of the name, gripping to the straps of his lute. A name mortals avoided speaking aloud, careful with the weight on their tongues. It landed even heavier in her domain, the shadows sharper and dancing at the edge of his vision. The Queen of Hades, the Goddess of Spring, Bringer of Fruit, Lady of the Underground.

“The souls are in a tizzy. She thought perhaps there was violent intent. You’ve got the look of a babe to you, though, so I would believe youthful lunacy instead, hm?”

Jaskier paused, trying to conjure an image of himself as some violent _threat_ , standing before this stunning woman in torn attire and nothing but a lute on his back. A babe, however, was not a kinder observation. Breathing through his wounded pride, he offered a small, tight-lipped smile, trying to blink innocence to her.

She laughed and the lights grew brighter, Jaskier left dizzy with it. The cloying feeling of peace was stronger as he shared a path with her, a smell in the air of rain on stone.

He wanted to ask this woman who she was. Goddess herself, or perhaps some chthonic nymph? He wanted to ask about the torch she carried through a garden already flooded with light. Wanted to know so much more about where he was, the animals at her side, what the story of everything around him could be. But he moved the coin around his mouth and said nothing. It almost felt like a curse.

“Well, go on.” The laugh stayed in her voice, and Jaskier would throw himself on a blade for her. Instead, she gestured up the path, further through the garden and shooed him away just as soon as she had beckoned him forth. “Best not to keep them waiting any longer. Straight to the throne room, boy.”

Jaskier didn’t have much choice, though he would rather grow old and grey kneeling at her feet. After another pointed motion from her beautifully sculpted hand, he tore himself away from her side. Began to wonder if the King and Queen would hear him out, or if the goddess in the garden motioned him to a final judgement. He’d found his way out of many a sketchy situation, scot free. Then again, usually he had full use of his mind and tongue, battling his way out through words, and both of those functions were weighed down now.

The woman’s eyes stayed on his back and only slightly surprising him when he heard her call out again. “A word of advice?”

He twisted around, owlish and ready.

She didn’t look to his face, focused solely on the lute he still clung to, her expression almost wistful. “Play them something lovely. I don’t think anyone has in years.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just say, Triss is so lovely and I would also throw myself on a blade for her, goddess or otherwise. 10pts if you can guess which goddess she is!
> 
> Also next chapter is like 80% why I started writing this fic to begin with so sit tight for that. I'm beyond excited.


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